Musician Glen Hansard who died in a motorbike accident early on Wednesday morning is being fondly remembered around the coast for his love of the sea, and the bonds he forged when he participated in the final leg of a currach row from Ireland to Spain.
Six years ago, the Oscar-winning singer, songwriter and activist released a a song written for late Kerry poet and seaman Dómhnall Mac Síthigh, (Danny Sheehy), with an accompanying video by Dónall Ó Ceilleachair capturing the spirit and rhythm of that voyage.
“It was a total vagary, an odyssey, an epic adventure . . . but thank God we had our instruments with us,” Hansard told this reporter for The Irish Times after the event.
Fellow musician Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich had enlisted Hansard as a late replacement in the crew for the third leg of the Camino na Sáile or "camino by sea" – a three- summer voyage from Ireland to northern Spain.
Hansard had never rowed any distance before he joined the expedition in Basque fishing port of Pasaia in May 2016.
“Having him there was like bringing Shergar to plough a field,”Ó Beaglaoich said in the same Irish Times interview.
“He learned to become an oarsman and to speak Irish and sing Irish songs and know the way of the sea and leave the other Glen Hansard at home.”
The hand-made, wooden-framed, canvas-covered boat Naomh Gobnait had set off in May 2014 from the river Liffey to test a sea route taken by coastal dwellers centuries ago on the northeast Atlantic rim.
The original crew along with Ó Beaglaoich and Sheehy were Kilkenny-based artist Liam Holden, who built the naomhóg with Sheehy, and Dingle peninsula stonemason and folklorist Breanndán Ó Mhuircheartaigh.
London-based lecturer and photographer Anne Burke joined for some days on the first leg, off the English coast.
The crew planned to follow and then extend a route set by four west Kerry oarsmen more than half a century ago, when musicians, singers, step dancers and storytellers Maras Cháit Chanair, Peaidí Sheáisí Ó Cearna and Seán Ó Criomhthain from the Blasket islands took a currach across the Irish Sea, along with Tom Mhic Gromail from Cathair Scuilbín.
The expedition – nicknamed Naomhóig na Tinte, or "naomhóig of the tents" – completed its third leg into the Galician port of La Coruña on June 23rd,2016, and the currach was brought by road to Santiago de Compostela, where it was carried through the streets for a celebration Mass.
Film-maker Dónal Ó Céilleachair documented the adventure for TG4.
The following year, 2017, the crew with musician Liam Ó Maonlaí embarked on a row further south. Sheehy, then 66 years of age, died after the Naomh Gobnait was caught by a wave close to the Minho river estuary on the Spanish-Portuguese border.
Hansard was not on that last trip, but composed a song and made a video with Ó Céilleachair, released six years ago, as a tribute to Sheehy.
As Afloat reported, Hansard wrote the piece, entitled Good Life of Song, while staying at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris.
“It’s a tribute to the life of bards and troubadours on their lifelong march through the towns and villages of the world, singing and drinking, expressing the sorrows and joys of the age as they court darkness and light with equal knowing,” Hansard said.
He described it as a “song of gratitude for the gift of singing”, in memory of boat captain Danny Sheehy.
Read The Irish Times here
